Of course the crash was intentional you party first GOP clod, but it was not due to politics, it was due to a bunch of people who knew exactly what they were doing as they fleeced the housing market like it was shearing day at the local sheep ranch.

Not only did they get mega wealthy off the superheated market, they also got paid for all the so called "toxic assets" that plummeted in value once the ponzi scam ran its course and could no longer suck any more cash from the bottom floor of the pyramid...sorry...market.

In fairness, there was a political component to this whole thing and that was government deregulation of the mortgage market, a centerpiece of bush Jr's first major piece of legislation in his first term. It was sold as nothing to be concerned about as it would give business, especially investors, an opportunity to self regulate the market into a self sustaining, steady financial engine that would power America into the next century and beyond. Only problem was, it relied on investors being both ethical and not greedy. Hard as I try, I can't believe anyone smart enough to get elected to the highest office in this country would think for a minute any investor worth their derivatives would be either ethical or not greedy, but that's just my personal opinion.

Fortunately, I acted on my instincts and avoided any investment like the plague while they were being driven into the ground, and concentrated instead on paying off all my debt and putting back every penny not required to run my business or keep taters on the table and a roof over my head. When everything came crashing down, I took my cash and bought several pieces of very nice property for a couple cents on the dollar and will hold them until the market once again overheats, when I will unload them for a big pile of cash.

Forget politics and roll with the punches folks. Adapting quick enough to keep up is the only way to thrive in these uncertain times and politics relies on you clinging to tradition so you are cutting off your own head to cling to one party no matter what.

It might have been the way to go when gramps wore his straw skimmer to the 4th of July fancy to do on the town square and news traveled over a wire as a series of longs and shorts, but this day and age it’s simply a means to an end for a bunch of people who feel it’s their right to live well off OUR tax dollars. People who could care less if you sink or swim so long as they get a spot on the tax payer supported trough.

Actually, if you look back in history, until women became something more than the chattel of their male owners, ALL men who could afford to do so, wore all manner of jewelry, as much as they could afford.

Back before the imported automobile and toney address, it was the most direct way to flaunt one's social status and men of all classes participated, even if it was to put a hole through a large denomination coin and wear it around one’s neck on a piece of string. The amount of "bling" denoted social status then as it does now so men wearing jewelry is nothing new, provocative, or definitive of one’s sexual orientation.

Like so many other things, what's old will come back in vogue then pass out of fashion, rest a while, then come back in style. It happens constantly with status symbols and has been going on for as long as there has been more than one human on this planet.

What’s truly amazing is the number of people who think a kid with an earing is something to get bent out of shape over, or even funnier, that it portents a bleak future for the kid in question. It’s a phase all kids go through where they look for anything that will upset or otherwise frustrate their parents and any other authority figure they happen to run across. When my folks were kids it was pony tails on girls and DA hair styles on boys, when I was a kid it was cast off old clothes and long hair on boys. These days it’s gender bending from both sexes, especially if their parents are ardent proponents of an anti gay agenda.

In short, it’s your typical American kid getting their first lesson in defiance and the consequences thereof. It is not an awful trend, it is proof that the flame which fires our inborn desire to be independent is still alive and well in this country.

It is also proof that no matter how much trends come and go in America, that basic desire to live in a free society where one can do as they desire so long as it doesn’t harm their neighbor (even at the expense of upsetting the status quo), is still very much alive and well.

So funny, all you party first clods trying to make this in to some kind of political statement.

What we are seeing, nationwide BTW, is the final settling of the housing market after the bubble burst a couple months before GWB left office. Some places are improving, some are still falling, but overall the market is settling to a low from which it can begin to rise once again.

Unfortunately, it will simply rise back into the same deregulated loan market and will once again become superheated, driven by the same artificially inflated home values required to drive the next mortgage bundling ponzi scheme which will be identical to the one that led to the last major housing market collapse.

This is about banks screwing people out of their property folks; it's not about the performance of one political party or the other. This is about banks gearing up to make yet another land grab by manipulating an unregulated market.

Here's the bottom line on housing, for the first time in American history banks own more private property than do the private citizens of this nation.

Do you politically blind ninny's think that was some kind of giant accident that can somehow be blamed on the incompetence or deliberate actions of one political party? Are you truly that simple?

This whole thing was engineered by the people who got pig rich off buying/selling mortgage bundles like so many used cars. They got flush crashing the market and then wound up holding all that "worthless" paper. only problem is, it also made our paper worth about the same as theirs, and they now hold more than all of us combined and if they get another chance they will own enough that the concept of property ownership by private individuals will be something only discussed in history classes, and we will become a nation of renters beholden to a handful of banks who will be our landlords.

But keep making it a political thing you bunch of simpletons…the banks are laughing all the way…to the bank…as you argue over which is more harmful the white stuff in chicken guano, or the black stuff.

Politics is 100% chicken guano folks; it's the banks and private investors we need to be watching like hawks.

So this supposed "war on the church" you speak of is the root of all crime these days?

When did we actually take God out of this nation? What year did that happen?

Also, what was the root of our crime problem BEFORE we took God out of this nation?

Or have you mistaken the idyllic "good old days" as the time when God was IN this nation and now that the "good old days" are gone it's God's fault we have crime? Are you saying there was no crime back in the “good old days”, back when God was in this nation? I don’t where you’ve been, but it’s obvious if you think America’s crime woes are recent, you have not spent much time on American history. Crime has existed in America as long as there have been laws to break.

I may be mistaken about this next question, but I think the most recent census data will back me on it.

Latest census data shows America has a larger percentage of people claiming to be christian than at any other time in her history. If that’s true, wouldn’t that prove we actually have MORE God in this nation than we have had at any other time in her history? If the percentage of christians in America is at a historical high, how is it also possible to have LESS God?

Sorry my friend, you are giving God way too much credit for the social ills which are OUR fault, not His.

Like my gramps used to be fond of saying “I hear talk about the good old days and how nice it was back then. Well son, I lived back in the good old days and they weren’t so dang good.”

In short, it’s easy to wax nostalgic about the “good old days” when in fact those days were not so much different than the present; it’s just easy to pretend they were better than what we have now because we don’t really care for the way things are going at present.

The hard truth is we have no control over our present or future so the only way to thrive is to adapt to current conditions, or become a victim of those who do adapt. These days that means being a better gun handler, prepared to meet violence with greater violence. Granted, not a very polite way to live, but it beats the alternative by a wide margin.

The same thing happens when you cram too many fish in too small a tank, they start killing each other. Too many of those fish see other fish with better shelter, food, mate, etc, and attack those they perceive as having a better life in their little world.

It's not guns, it's not society breaking down, at least not in ways the upright keepers of the moral flame would have you believe, it's a simple matter of the haves displaying their stuff which causes the have not’s to redouble their efforts to be a part of the upper crust club.

Simply stated folks, it's the all out "greed is good" and “eff you pal I'm getting mine even if screws you to make it happen" mantra we exist under in America.

We have become a society of mostly self indulgent navel gazers who think the world revolves around us and the rest of mankind can like it or not.

We are conditioned from birth to believe we can anything we want and when that fails to come to us on a silver platter, we simply do like everyone else and take the quickest route to that goal no matter what legal or moral that route might be. The news entertainment industry encourages this crap by making outlaws into heroes and ignoring real heroes unless there is some additional spin to the narrative.

Either way, you can decry the current conditions and hope for the good "ole days, or you can arm up, train up, and be prepared to meet violence with greater violence. it's the only thing most understand any more so you might as well embrace the reality that in order to survive in today's America you must be a better gun handler than the thug who wants whatever you might have in your pocket.

Lay enough of the two bit wannabes tough guys out to cool and all but the hardest of the hard core will seek other means of support.

So Alabama is broke and we are looking for ways to EXPAND our welfare rolls?

If you think irresponsible people won't drop unwanted infant children on welfare like they’re hot, I would remind you of what happened when Nebraska recently passed a safe haven law. So many people dumped kids on them they had to suspend the program in less than a month because it threatened to overwhelm their state welfare system.

The sooner you accept as fact that irresponsible people don't give a whit about what you think and will have sex no matter the possible consequences, the sooner you come to realize the prudent course is to ENCOURAGE birth control and pay for it if necessary. In the long run it's much cheaper, both in dollars and the devastating emotional toll taken from unwanted infants raised by a system that sees them more as income than blessing. It’s time to accept that fact that the actions of others have zero bearing on your personal path to salvation and put an eye to the actual dollars and cents cost of what you are asking for. You can’t require people to be good folks, get over it and move on. Irresponsible A-holes will go to jail before they will comply, but only AFTER dumping a kid or two on welfare.

In short folks, allow the scales to fall from your eyes and see the reality of what is going on around you. Cry all you want, threaten all you want, cajole all you want, legislate all you want, but irresponsible people are going to have unprotected sex if they can't afford/acquire protection, and they are going to dump their unwanted offspring on tax payer supported welfare as quick as they can. We can encourage fewer babies through contraception or we can accept higher taxes to cover the increased fiscal load on our welfare system.

Tell me how to discourage contraception without increasing the fiscal load on welfare and you have my unqualified support.

Otherwise, it’s an economy folks, an ideal which can’t be guided by conscience or emotion. Its simple numbers and if we can’t keep those numbers out of the red we lose, and discouraging contraception and abortion only serves to push us further into the red.

"No need to ban just require that they socialize and train the dogs. Not such a broad brush please."

And you think legislating responsible behavior will work with irresponsible pet owners any better than it will work with any other "class" of irresponsible A-hole? Really??

How are all those laws banning criminals from owning guns working out?

How about something as simple as minors not allowed to have tobacco?

Making it illegal to own a certain breed of dog without proper training is well intentioned, but (sadly) as pie in the sky ignorant as thinking we can make irresponsible a-holes love unwanted babies by banning abortion.

"Today's report is part of an effort to preserve federal funding for preschool education at a time when lawmakers are struggling with the federal budget, Falls said."

Here's your reason for this "education" push. We are about to lose some FEDERAL FUNDING so we must justify it by having an employee (who depends on that federal funding BTW), go read to kids for a day and we allow this kind of madness?

If the program was effective it would not need federal dollars to prop it up. The state obviously can't afford it on their own, so why bother?

Fat trimming often hurts those we need to be helping most. Divert some state funds from the department of game and fish to this pre K program and tell the fed to keep their nanny cash.

Oh wait...most of the state department of game and fish is federally funded also.

Dang there sure is an awful lot of federal funding going on in Alabama, and considering the attitude of our government it's hypocrisy of the first order to not only accept these funds, but to work hard at pretending we can't get by without them.

If we don’t want to fund education, why should that be a federal concern? Let’s quit messing around and make our stand folks. Let’s tell the fed to take every penny of welfare currently coming to Alabama and just keep it. Send DC the word loud and clear we don’t like your style of government so we don’t want your money. Now please just butt out and let us live as we see fit.

This will turn out to be the driver of the truck trying to wedge his truck into a space too small for it because he couldn't wait the few seconds required for a safe opening in traffic. At highway speeds clipping another vehicle attempting to cut in front of said vehicle is nothing more than a (very) high speed reverse PIT maneuver. The only problem is, simple physics takes over and because of speed and inertia the vehicle forced sideways goes into what is known as a high side roll, meaning it rolls when the forward facing tires dig in and the inertia of the vehicle causes it to roll (often airborne) over these forward facing tires.

That the truck went airborne high enough to clear a K rail is proof of speed well in excess of the posted limit of 60 mph through that very congested, very dangerous section of interchange.

Yet another example of the “more me less you” attitude that is becoming the rule rather than the exception in today’s society.

It’s tragic that people died, but it was wholly preventable so it’s important that we discuss the cause and effect in hopes it will help prevent future occurrences of the same thing.

WOW!! All this tough talk about revolution and terror versus revolution and whatnot...

How tough are most of you going to be on your 138th day of queuing up at your neighborhood water buffalo to get your daily 2 liters of H2O and your 3 (per night ration of) candles, and maybe talk one of the guards out of an MRE to avoid having to eat the same mystery soup you’ve been eating for the last 60 odd days.

Don't get me wrong here folks, I'll thrive in hard times just like I do in good times, but so many of you are so woefully unprepared for the reality of what a revolution would mean to America, and it ain't sitting around a well lit bunker with hot and cold running young revolutionaries planning raids and stuff, it's endless hours in the dark, crapping in a can and wishing you could get some relief from the heat and/or cold. It's a shower once a week and glad to have it. In short, it's a monotonous daily grind that seems to go on forever, and it's all thanks to a handful of malcontents who decided to make everyone miserable because they couldn't have everything exactly their way.

Yes we have problems in America today, but we've been in much tighter spots and we never gave up and said let's burn it all down, we set our petty differences aside and pulled for the common good and got our country back on the high road.

If you want to tear it all down and start over that's your right as an American to want that, but keep in mind it's a very tough row to hoe when just a little compromise will accomplish just as much without all the hysterical blowing up of things.

I've been part of 3 different peacekeeping missions to countries split by revolutions and the only real difference in any of them was the language being used to moan about the good old days before the crazies tore it all down.

If you want to play war, there are plenty of hot spots around the globe just waiting for you to show up and fight so why in God’s name would you want to go to war on your home ground. I spent the better part of my life insuring that if doors had to be kicked in it was ALWAYS theirs, and now some of you WANT to kick in doors on your home turf? Really?? Really???

So you want to turn America into a single party dictatorship with a heavy dose of theocracy thrown in for good measure and I'm a hate filled resentful individual?

I'm a dyed in the wool half full type my friend. I own my own business carry zero debt and do without if I can’t pay cash. I’m a well trained gun handler with plenty of threat awareness experience and I’m always ready to meet violence directed at me or any of my fellow citizens with greater violence. To be clear, if some wannabe thug steps to me with bad intent, or I see them doing it to someone else, they better be quick or they will be dead. I do not shoot to wound.

In short my lazy, spoon fed hateful friend who wants to see America reduced to a single party dictatorship, I agree with you. Let’s see once and for all just how heroic and good intentioned your precious GOP and their organized church friends truly are when there is no one to act as a counter to their will.

Here’s the short from my friend…the organized church has already replaced God as THE earthly power most cling to, now that same organized church, using the GOP as it’s nice guy mask to hide it’s devil face, is trying to make itself more important than the government of these United States, and it’s kneejerk clods like you who are helping make that possible for no other reason than to fulfill some vindictive desire to hold the evil democrats under your collective GOP thumb. You want that picayune thrill of bragging rights and you are too simple to see the real evil hiding behind the façade you think will give you those bragging rights. This is not college ball my rather simple friend, this is national politics and America is about evenly split these days. One side is willing to compromise to make life as livable as possible for ALL us, the other side wants to line up their “enemies” and shoot them in the public square.

Which side are YOU on?

I know it will be a real effort for you, but for God’s sake try to think outside the hateful political box the GOP/organized church has you so tightly locked up in these days.

Do you think for a minute the US would turn over the launch codes for the US atomic arsenal to a fraud? Do you think he was not exhaustively investigated BEFORE he was allowed to take control of the most powerful destructive force on this planet?

Oh gee I keep forgetting the fix was in so it really didn't matter where he was born, is that the stupidity you cling to and expect us to swallow as well?

Having been the subject of a top secret background check while in the USMC I can tell you they will find out what gum you chewed as a kid and if you ever stuck any of it under a desk at school, so what makes you think for even a moment the level of security clearance required to CONTROL our arsenal is so slack it would not be able to nail down the birthplace of someone being investigated, or would just look the other way if they discovered the subject of said investigation was a fraud?

Are you folks truly that simple???

And lets not forget an even simpler proof of your idiocy. Before Obama ever thought of running for office he obtained a passport. To obtain a passport as an American citizen requires either an original or officially recognized copy of one’s birth certificate, so it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Obama to obtain a passport without an original or officially acceptable copy of his birth certificate. Oh that’s right…silly me…that must have been the clever forgeries he used to not only fool the State Department for his passport, they were the same fake documents he used to fool the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and everyone else on his insidious climb to the top of the new world order as president of the United States.

That’s almost as clever as how Obama was able to cover the fact he took his senate oath on the Koran by simply lying and claiming he took it on the same Bible used by Lincoln to be sworn in as president. He’s such a convincing liar this guy Obama, he even managed to slip a letter in the files of the Library of Congress requesting the use of the Lincoln Bible, along with another clever fake letter from the LOC approving his request. How did he ever manage to fool so many people with such simple lies and deceptions???

Fortunately there are a handful of clever folk such as yourself who can see through all that charade and underhandedness to the hard truth. It must be lonely to be such a keen observer of the truth while so roundly ignored when you try to warn the sheep.

Your tin foil hat is not too tight is it? Whatever it takes to dodge the black helicopters though, so keep up the good work and never quit preaching the truth.

I couldn't agree more. It is the quickest way to once and for all demonstrate what a bunch of clowns the GOP is composed of. Not only will it shine a hot white light on their boobery, it will also eliminate anyone to blame their failures on.

Unfortunately the current crop of upright keepers of the moral flame comprising the GOP supermajority are working day and night to push for a theocratic bent to every law they pass, and with the right reverend Look-At-Me sitting atop the state court system, the larger goal is obviously to push for injecting biblical ideals into state law in an attempt at further blurring the line separating church and state.

Oh what the heck, let's just go ahead and let the christianizes have their run while we are at it. Then we can also once and for all see them as the back hacking, power hungry toads they in fact are, and let's just get all this supposing and speculating over with in one big bloody swoop so we can move through the rest of this century secure in the knowledge of just how evil the mixing of politics and religion truly is.

In short my short sighted friend, let’s do this thing. Lets stamp out the democratic party and give the GOP total control of everything and let them inject as much church as they want. Removing anyone else for them to blame is the hands down quickest way I can think of to expose them for the selfish, one way, spoiled little brats they are.

As the late George Corley Wallace once said about our two party system, "there's not a dimes worth of difference between them". I think he was really on to something there.

macy75 said "We were screwed by the sewer bonds while JP Morgan made bank on us"

Shoulda been a carpenter...nail on the head and all that...

All that bluster the other day about JP Morgan suffering a multibillion dollar loss is so much BS, a handful of people bold enough to thumb their noses at enough SEC regs to insure long prison terms for anyone caught holding the bag, colluded to steal it and got clean away with ultra fat stacks.

Crime pays in America folks...especially when you and a few of your best friends get together and flat footed hose hundreds of thousands of small investors out of their life savings then look them straight in the eye, call it a loss, and go on about the business of finding the next pile of suckers to fleece....just like they did when they nosed their way into the jeffco deal, or more aptly, bought in REAL cheap.

But I digress...By volume Alabama has the second largest constitution on the planet...India beats us with THE most voluminous steering document on earth and in essence it does the same thing to India as ours does to us. By forcing such a concentrated consolidation of power, it insures the bulk of those living under its auspices have no say whatever in how they are governed.

They have a rigid caste system, we have the good 'ole boy network...like the little Okinawa girl used to tell me about Cutty Sark and Johnnie Walker Red..."same same GI"

While there remain a few true believers out there, the vast majority of those today who claim to be christian would have Jesus arrested if he knocked on their door and asked for sanctuary.

I have a cuz who is moving up the ranks in the baptist league and is currently pulling in more than 100K, big house, big car, etc. He sent his daughter to live with family in Colorado because she likes to smoke weed and was not shy about telling folks and he felt this would be damaging to his career. My gramps told him when he announced he was going to college to become a preacher that he couldn’t go to school to become a preacher, he had to be called to be a preacher. Apparently no one sent that memo to God as I have not seen an authentic lay preacher in so many years I can’t remember when the last one was. I’ve seen plenty of millionaire rock star preachers and their hissy fit throwing trophy wives jetting around on private jets “starring” in big lavish productions where they talk about faith almost as much as they ask for money to support their “ministry”, but a simple soul who pounds nails or lays brick Monday through Friday to support his family and preaches on Sunday because the Sprit is so big in him he has no choice but to let it out…it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen the like.

Sadly, with the rise of megachurches and the BIG $$$ they reap; christianity has become just another product to be packaged, marketed, and sold.

And don't even get me started on how deep in bed politics and the organized church are together these days. It's enough to make a simple soul such as I puke my guts up in a big old technicolor pile.

As for this carpetbagging wannabe con artist, put him on a rock pile making little ones out of big ones for about six months and then check his ego.